KATHMANDU, May 27, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Ameesha Chauhan, a survivor of the
Everest “traffic jam” who is in hospital recovering from frostbite, said
climbers without basic skills should be barred to prevent a recurrence of
this year’s deadly season on the world’s highest peak.
Ten people have died in little more than two weeks after poor weather cut
the climbing window, leaving mountaineers waiting in long queues to the
summit, risking exhaustion and running out of oxygen.
Nepal issued a record 381 Everest permits this season, and several hundred
of the summiteers are not properly trained, take poor decisions and “put
their own life in risk and also the Sherpa guides”, Chauhan said.
The 29-year-old Indian had to wait 20 minutes to come down from the 8,848-
metre (29,029-foot) peak, but others were held up for hours.
“I saw some climbers without basic skills fully relying on their Sherpa
guides. The government should fix the qualification criteria,” she told AFP
in Kathmandu’s general hospital, all the toes on her left foot black and blue
and her face weather-worn.
“Only trained climbers should be granted the permit to climb Everest.”
As well as the Everest deaths, nine climbers have died on other 8,000-metre
Himalayan peaks, while one is missing.
At least four deaths on the world’s highest mountain have been blamed on
over-crowding with teams waiting sometimes for hours in the “death zone”
where the cold is bitter, the air dangerously thin and the terrain
treacherous.
This year’s Everest toll is the highest since 2014-15 when huge earthquakes
triggered devastating avalanches. The crowding was laid bare in a photo taken
last week by Nirmal Purja, a former Gurkha soldier, of a long queue of
climbers snaking up to the summit.
The photo by the head of the Project Possible charity aiming to climb the
14 8,000 metre-plus peaks in the world in seven months has gone viral from
his @nimsdai Twitter handle and highlighted the dangers amidst the mania to
climb Everest.
“Many climbers’ oxygen was running out,” Chauhan said.
“Some climbers died due to their own negligence. They insisted on reaching
the top even if their oxygen is running out, which risks their life,” she
said.
Another climber, the “adventure filmmaker” Elia Saikaly, posted on
Instagram on Sunday that he had reached the summit of Everest and “cannot
believe what I saw up there”.
“Death. Carnage. Chaos. Lineups. Dead bodies on the route and in tents at
camp 4. People who I tried to turn back who ended up dying. People being
dragged down. Walking over bodies,” Saikaly wrote.
“Everything you read in the sensational headlines all played out on our
summit night.”
– $11,000 ticket –
Mountaineering has become big business since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing
Norgay made the first ascent of Everest in 1953, with the mountain becoming a
favourite “bucket list” feat.
Nepal’s permits this season cost $11,000 each, providing the impoverished
Himalayan country with much-needed foreign currency.
At least 140 others were granted permits to climb from the northern flank
in Tibet.
Although final numbers are yet to be released with the season set to wrap
up this week, this could take the total past last year’s record of 807 people
reaching the summit.
The dead included four climbers from India and one each from the United
States, Britain and Nepal. An Irish mountaineer is presumed dead after he
slipped and fell close to the summit.
Another Austrian and an Irish climber died on the northern Tibet side.
One of the Indians who died on the Nepal side, 27-year-old Nihal Bagwan,
had to wait for more than 12 hours and died on his way back from the summit.
Donald Lynn Cash, 55, collapsed at the summit as he was taking photographs,
while Anjali Kulkarni, also 55, died while descending after reaching the top.
Kulkarni’s expedition organiser, Arun Treks, said heavy traffic at the
summit had delayed her descent and caused the tragedy.
“She had to wait for a long time to reach the summit and descend,” said
Thupden Sherpa. “She couldn’t move down on her own and died as Sherpa guides
brought her down.”